moving out of London in late 2008 I had not participated in any public demonstrations or protests and was glad to be back amidst the crowds. As the approximately 20,000 protesters descended upon High St Ken I was struck by two observations. Firstly by how many young teenaged Muslims were in the crowd. Perhaps I never particularly noticed from past demonstrations the sheer numbers of such young protesters. Perhaps it is specifically the Free Gaza protests that have attracted so many young protesters who may have followed the unfolding of the massacre online. I don’t know the answers. I re-watched the 3-minute video I took just before the 20,000 crowd gathered round and was again struck by the boldness and forwardness of young Muslim girls running up the stage, taking hold of the microphone and leading the early-gathered crowds in anti-Israeli chants. It could well be just the difference in physical layout – the last time I attended a mass protest it ended in Trafalgar Square where there is no chance of random protesters running onto the stage and grabbing the microphone. Regardless of the physical or logistic design of these protests, it was clear to me that there really has been an upswell of increasing popular support. Read more…

You won’t find much news or updates in the mainstream UK press, so follow these above. If you’re on Twitter, the following people will provide useful updates. Please remember to use the #flotilla hashtag to keep it trending:

These ‘naked scanners’ have worried me since they were first introduced on trial at Manchester airport last year (read here for news of that in Oct 2009). While they were still on trial and we had the option of the traditional ‘pat down’ method, we the public had some distance from their potential reality as a norm in UK airports. But now, five months later, naked scanners have been installed in Manchester and Heathrow airports, with ‘random travellers’ being picked out to be more closely scrutinised with these x-ray scanners. In January an article in the Guardian was worried about these scanners threatening to break child porn laws, reminding us that the trial of the scanners in Manchester went ahead only after they could rule out under-18s from the scans. Quite rightly the potential threat of the “creation of indecent images of children” should be eliminated. What worries me is that my privacy and protection as an adult has not been privileged at all. Read more…